Colleague Amsler's contribution to the subject of career recognition
for computer skills leads to the reflection that in Gutenberg's day,
Florence was in the forefront of book production following the old
technology of calligraphic copywork (though scriptores were not auctores)
and would never have allowed a Gutenberg to develop in the city. It was
a marginated German and the commercially minded seaport of Venice that
swiftly occupied the new moveable type business, leaving us the now
priceless Aldine editions, etc. No great early library prided itself
on holdings of which other copies existed elsewhere. The outstanding
collectionists (of obelisks, busts, books) wanted what others couldn't
have. Humanistic cultivation of the best led also to the diffusion of
cultivation by emulation, and quickly to its inflation (also because
some new printers moved to portable or "pocket"-sized books).
Gutenberg led to editions as fixed inspiration (as though authors
somehow knew when they had their books just right); tribal respect
followed; ultimately positivist philosophy led to scholarship with
thousands of note cards and concordances, which in turn made data
processing conceivable. The computer was made necessary by the 19th
century. Technologies are a by-product of human culture; they are
all absorbed into humanity; and they all help make humanity (were we
human before we spoke?).

Just a short note to remind you that the course I am doing for the summer
school before ALLC/ICCH in June will deal with exactly that subject: setting
up and running a facility to support humanities computing. I will be
drawing on my own experience at UCLA but also on what information I can
gather from some of the rest of you who doing similar things.
See you there!
Vicky Walsh